


For War Alone

by Captain Natasha Riker-Troi (textsfrompicard)



Series: Echoes of the Enterprise [1]
Category: Star Trek - Various Authors, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Titan
Genre: Aliens Made Them Do It, Angst, Blood and Injury, F/M, Fear, Gen, Inspired by Novel, Minor Violence, Possession, Stranded
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:40:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27196603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/textsfrompicard/pseuds/Captain%20Natasha%20Riker-Troi
Summary: While exploring an abandoned world, Tasha and René inadvertently transport themselves to a planet interdicted nearly a century and a half ago due to the presence of artifacts containing dangerous entities which have the potential to cause the collapse of the Federation if unleashed…
Relationships: Natasha Miana Riker-Troi/Rene Jacques Robert Francois Picard
Series: Echoes of the Enterprise [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1985389
Comments: 1
Kudos: 1
Collections: Trektober 2020





	For War Alone

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to the TNG novel Possession, which is itself a sequel to the TOS novel Demons. Inspired by the prompt ‘stranded on a planet’ (10/25) and I guess this also fits the prompt ‘aliens made them do it’ (10/4). This is also a follow-up to my previous series, The Adventures of Natasha Riker-Troi.

_Beekman’s Planet_  
_Hydrilla sector_  
_Circa 2404 A.D._

Lieutenant Natasha Riker-Troi never thought she would be running for her life from the love _of_ her life. But then again, she supposed that was to be expected when your boyfriend was possessed by artificially bonded subatomic entities who fed off your most primal emotions.

She heard a loud clattering behind her and ran faster, panting with exertion as the terrain suddenly morphed into an uphill climb. She didn’t dare lower the shields around her mind to try to get a sense of how close behind her he was; the entities had already tried to use their mental link to induce strong emotions in her so they could feed, and her unshielded mind would be like a beacon to them. So she continued running, desperately trying to find some kind of nonlethal weapon among the ruins to incapacitate her… opponent. She knew how to perform the Vulcan neck pinch, but she was wary of the physical contact it required, since all the entities needed to spread was minor physical contact and eye contact, and all René would need to do was make her look into his eyes for a moment…

 _But it’s_ not _René_ , Tasha reminded herself fiercely. He’d been taken over by the same entities that had nearly taken over the Enterprise-D thirty-four years ago, after a Vulcan scientist named Skel released them aboard the ship as an unwilling accomplice. Skel was the unfortunate victim of a mutated cluster of entities that were able to hide dormant in his mind for about a century, ever since the Vulcan expedition returned from Beekman’s Planet and brought the infection back with them, releasing a plague of murder and violence such that Vulcan had not seen since before the time of Surak. But _these_ entities, the ones that now held Tasha’s _Imzadi_ in thrall, were the same variety as the original entities, and should not have evolved measurably in all this time. The artifacts in which they were held kept them in a kind of stasis, where they did not need to feed; it was only when they were released that they became active, and entered the minds of their victims through the optic nerve in order to feast on their fear, terror, lust, and myriad other of the most basic and primal emotional states. The first outbreak was resolved when Kirk’s Enterprise discovered that the entities could be literally starved to death; if an infected individual was held captive, alone, for a minimum of twenty-eight hours, the entities would perish.

All of Tasha’s hopes now rested on the idea that the entities which currently possessed her boyfriend were as vulnerable as the originals, and not closer in kind to the mutated entities which had spread aboard the Enterprise-D. The latter were immune to the twenty-eight hour starvation period, due to their evolved ability to lie dormant in a host until ‘food’ was plentiful again. The outbreak was only defeated when her mother, along with Data, Worf, Alexander, and a visiting scientist, devised a way to lure and trap the entities, so they could be subsequently destroyed by using the transporter to disperse them into their harmless, individual components, which had most likely been artificially bonded together to produce the infectious entities. But Tasha did not have any of these devices on hand, nor did she have the means to create them. Her goal now was to evade possessed René until she could render him unconscious long enough to create some kind of holding cell for him, and keep him there until the entities were starved, using the intervening time to search the ruins for a subspace transmitter to send a distress call. 

There was no regular traffic through this sector, the planet being long since quarantined, so it was highly unlikely that anyone would find them by accident. The rest of the away team might be able to figure out where they went, but she didn’t exactly have the luxury of waiting for them now that René had been infected. If she couldn’t find or craft a working subspace transmitter, she and René would be stranded here for the rest of their lives-- _which might not be that long, anyway,_ she reflected, as she heard pounding footsteps behind her. Quickly, she ducked behind a crumbling marble pillar, intending to take René by surprise as he overtook her position. She noted with vague, detached interest that the carvings on the pillar showed striking similarities to the inscriptions on the boxes which kept them in stasis. In all these decades, no one had ever succeeded in fully translating the intricate writing, except for one stray, ominous phrase: ‘for war alone’. 

When one of the _Wellington_ ’s long-range probes had detected ruins on a previously unexplored planet which bore resemblance to those of the one on which Tasha and René now found themselves, Captain Boimler had reacted with all the enthusiasm of a first-year cadet, insisting on personally leading the away team, despite his science officer’s warnings that they had detected unexplained energy surges around the planet. Apparently, those energy surges had been coming from gateways (unrelated but similar to the Iconian variety) which had once been used as a sort of interplanetary transport network by the civilization that had unleashed the entities against their enemies, only to destroy themselves. The system was badly corroded from centuries of neglect, but apparently there was just enough energy to send Tasha and René through to what was estimated to be the original homeworld of the ancient civilization, although Tasha wasn’t sure how much of that was unconscious bias from the fact that this planet had been the first one discovered, but it was also the only one which held any of the infamous artifacts in its possession.

 _Speaking of possession…_ Tasha felt her body tense involuntarily as René approached. He passed the pillar behind which she was hiding, and paused, momentarily confused. Before he could get his bearings, Tasha pounced. She tackled him from behind, pushing him to the ground and holding his head hard against the cracked asphalt so as to deny him any opportunity to attempt eye contact. They struggled, remaining locked in a stalemate until Tasha was finally able to get a proper grip on his shoulder. She squeezed as tightly as she could, firmly ignoring René’s entreaties to just stop for a second and look at him… if she would just look into his eyes, she would understand…

His body suddenly went limp, and she dragged him to an open doorway, trying not to look at his bloodied face and bruised limbs. The last time René’s nose had been broken, he had been protecting her from another cadet. She hadn’t shown him nearly enough appreciation at the time, so afraid as she was of her growing feelings for him. Now, if she couldn’t succeed in eliminating the entities from his system, she would lose him forever.

The doorway apparently led to what had once been some sort of school, as there were endless rooms of tiny desks lined up in neat little rows. Tasha dragged René into one of these rooms, removing some of the heavier furniture to use it to block the door. After some more effort, she was able to stack some of the debris from the street in front of the windows, to cut off that potential avenue of escape. She wished fervently that she had access to a forcefield generator, but there was no time to go hunting for better technology, even if any of it was still functional. Besides, she was already pushing her luck thinking she had any chance of finding a subspace transmitter on this dustball.

She turned on her heel and set off toward the erstwhile heart of the ancient city, willing herself not to turn around at the sound of René shouting and banging on the door upon regaining consciousness, but she was unable to keep herself from weeping.


End file.
